2. How does your product use, develop and challenge forms and conventions of real media products? Before starting my music video I researched an album release, a director and other music videos which I found really effective as it helped me to see what other media products were out there and gave me a better understanding of what makes a good and effective music video. Through studying these it helped me to analyse my video and also establish how it conformed to the forms and conventions of other media products.
3. My Music Video uses Goodwin’s analysis of music videos… Goodwin’s theory is that there should be a demand by the vocalist or record company to have lots of close-ups of the main artist for the video. In my video I shot 4 sets of close-ups of he artist so that when It came to editing I had enough footage to have as many close-ups as the artist wanted. I also shot 3 sets of medium close ups of the artist so that the demand was met and I still had a lot of variety to the shots. There is a relationship between the lyrics and the visuals, and the music and the visuals in my music video which is another of Goodwin’s theories. There is a connection between the music and visuals in the way in which I have edited it, as the music in the video starts of at a slow pace, as does the editing and when the music picks up and becomes up-tempo then the editing matches it as the scenes are cut quicker. The relationship between the lyrics and the visual illustrate what the artist is singing. The narrative section which runs through explains the lyrics where Steve sings “Didn’t wanna make no women cry” and also “There’s been a storm a coming” and the narrative matches and emphasises this point My video is shot as a live performance with accompanying audience which also conforms to forms and conventions of real media products.
4. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts? Through researching the album release before I started making the video it helped me to understand that it isn’t as simple as just releasing an album and there is a lot of marketing that needs to be done to achieve success. So when asked to make a DVD Digipak to accompany my music video and an advert to promote it I knew what was involved to make it an effective combination and make sure that they were all linked and had a consistent house style.
5. I put a lot of research into how a Digipak should look and analysed Madonna’s Digipak release and a Nirvana Digipak to see what it involved. My Digipak is a 3-way gatefold. The inside is very simple and I added a cartoonised effect to make it look a bit more interesting and as the majority of the video was shot at quite a small venue I wanted to make my cover art look like a poster that you might find on a notice board advertising the gig which I think I have achieved and complements the video very well. I added the same effect on the front cover art and added poster style text to describe what was included and incorporate with the look of the DVD. My artist is quite humble and his act is very simplistic – him and a guitar- I didn’t want to overpower him with a busy DVD cover with too much going on around so I decided to keep it very minimalistic.
6. The idea that I had for my magazine advert, is one that I analysed in the research process. This advert was very simplistic and wasn’t over crowded and had a nice in depth description of what was inside which complemented the genre of music and helped sell the advert to the reader. A lot of magazine adverts I saw were very busy but they were for dance music and rock bands which did not work when I tried to apply it to my video. It caught my attention immediately and I was intrigued by the CD. Although I didn’t include as much text in my advert to add to the simplistic iconography. I think that the combination of my Digipak, video and advert is very effective as they all carry a style that could be recognised and I think that because Steve is an up and coming artist it helps with his star iconography and people will instantly recognise him as he is on all of the products. Also the ancillary texts and music video can all be easily associated with the genre of his music as he is a solo acoustic guitar player which is obvious just by looking at the DVD Digipak and Advert.
8. I carried out two kinds of audience research, one through survey monkey where I sent the link to my Facebook to my contacts and another where I asked family their opinion. The audience research part of this evaluation was the biggest eye opener as it gave me a lot of confidence in my video and also things I need to work on if I ever work on a project similar again. I asked a number of questions relating to my video including questions like if they liked my video, if the venue suited the performance and also what they thought the best and worst parts were. It gave me a clear idea of what the audience liked and disliked in this genre of music videos and again helped me to reflect on things I could’ve done better and things that I have achieved. I emailed 15 people and asked them to take part in my survey. Here’s two examples of some questions I asked… The audience research let me know that the venue that I picked suited the artist as it was quite a grungy venue and suited my artist and his style.
9. I asked my audience who the video would be aimed at and the majority of people said 13-18 year olds which will help me market my video and help me chose where to show the video, which will be Facebook or another SNS site that they would be more likely to be using. Or also maybe an under 18’s gig or college.
10. How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
11. In the research section of my music video project I researched magazine adverts in a few recent magazines. I researched a director and album release and YouTube helped me a lot in researching the director’s body of work. YouTube was one of the most used piece of technology in my project as it helped during the whole process helping my to research and display my work. The album release that I researched was really interesting as through researching it I found a game release that coincided and I was introduced to game demos online and on YouTube. The social networking site “Ning” was the carrier for all my information, so I could access my information from any computer with the internet which I found very useful and easy to organise and navigate through. Uploading my information and research to Ning was made easier with the use of Slideshare which enabled me to upload PowerPoints to my Ning, and Issu which enabled me to organise my documents and made them easier to read and access which I found kept my work much tidier and also so easy to transfer from my home computer and the college network. The website Survey Monkey was key in the research stages of my project as it enabled me to easily collect my audience research and work out percentages of the questions I had asked. I would send a link to my friends on Facebook and it would take them straight to the website where they can take part in said survey. I used Twitter and Facebook to communicate with fellow classmates and to let people know my progress and to find out what all other students were upto and what progress tha they had made.
12. The planning stage of my project was made easier through the use of technology and other media. I used my Blackberry to email my artist and it made communication much more efficient and quicker than constantly trying to find a computer to use. When I designed my animatic storyboard for the music video I used windows movie maker to upload my sketches and sync them with the track that I was using for my music video. For my Digipak and music magazine I used Adobe Photoshop CS3 which I was very familiar with from using it last year for AS. In the evaluation stages I have used most of the same media technologies that I have used for my research stages.
13. To make my video I used Adobe Premiere Pro which I found quite easy to use after the initial couple of days as I had never used it before and thought it was a bit daunting at first. On this I edited my music video together after transferring the footage from the camera. As it came straight from the hard drive Sony HD camera it was so easy and efficient to upload my footage and pass on the anyone who need the camera if they needed it to do their filming straight away. For the performance part of the video I didn’t have to use any effects as it was filmed in high definition and the lighting in the Marquee was really good. For the narrative I used a lot of effects to make it look as much like a narrative from a movie which is the look I was aiming for. I used the crop tool to make the scene widescreen as it would be in a film, and I played around with a lot of colour effects to find the one which was most effective. Eventually I settled for a black and white effect and sharpened the image to make it look more crisp. I found it really interesting to learn that the parts I shot inside and outside needed two different effects because of the artificial vs. natural light.
